This year, we’ll be following Melissa Ruiz, a four-time Para Climbing National Champion with big wall ambitions. Ruiz, who was born with Cerebral Palsy, began climbing in 2018 and started competing that same year. She made rapid progress: at her first World Championship in 2019, she came in 12th place out of 19. At the next one in 2021, she came in sixth. In 2023, she was second. Last year, she won her first World Championship gold. “I never turn down a challenge,” she says.
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Melissa Ruiz is an NYC native. She is a competitive paraclimber, paralympic hopeful, and a future circus performer. Melissa was born with Cerebral Palsy, which causes weakness and stiffness from the waist down, but that hasn't stopped her from learning aid and trad climbing and projecting some of the biggest walls in America. Melissa is one of the most decorated USA para climbers competing today.
Q&A with Melissa Ruiz, 4x RP1 Para Climbing National Champion
Summit Journal: What does your IG handle “Mind over Melissa” (@mind_over_melissa) mean to you?
Melissa Ruiz: Mind over Melissa is a reminder that life comes with ups and downs. No one thing is undoable. Literally, where there’s a will, there’s a way.
My Instagram account isn’t just a climbing account. It’s an account that I use to share all of my many adventures with the world (or whomever happens to be paying attention). Life is meant to be fun, and so I do fun things and hope for the best.
SJ: Let’s start with a little non-climbing-related background. I know you’re about 30, live in NYC, and are into aerial arts, but can you tell us a bit more about yourself?
MR: The first thing to know about me is that I almost never say no to things, so if you don’t actually want me to do something, don’t suggest it. The next thing to know is that I never turn down a challenge.
I got into all the things I do either because I was bored and decided to try it, or because someone told me about it, and then I became obsessed. I love to have fun, I love to go on new adventures, and I’m incredibly stubborn. The running joke amongst my friends and me is that I’m a dumbass because I’ll jump headfirst into a challenge or activity without fully knowing what’s in store, simply because it sounded fun at the time.
You were born with cerebral palsy, which causes weakness and stiffness from the waist down. Before getting into climbing in 2018, did you have a background in sports?
Before discovering the world of paraclimbing, I hadn’t really done any sports. I’ve always been active, though. I worked out a lot just because I liked looking muscular. I actually really wanted to be a bodybuilder.
SJ: How did you get into climbing?
MR: I decided to start climbing because, at the time, it was the only sport that my body could handle. I was able to get away with relying mostly on my arms, so it seemed like the right fit. Over time, I learned how to get my legs to help, and then I eventually learned how to use my core. Climbing has been better for me than physical therapy ever was. It forces me to use my body in ways that I otherwise wouldn’t think of. It gave me a way and a reason to work on my leg and core strength.
SJ: Very quickly, you started competing. In general, it’s rarer for someone new to the sport to start competing right away. Do you consider yourself a competitive person?
MR: I am definitely a competitive person!
Part of the reason I’m so strong was that I was always roughhousing with my brothers. I liked arm-wrestling, and at some point, I got strong enough to take on the male students in my classes. I was always trying to prove that I could do what everyone else was doing, and that I could do it somewhat better.
SJ: Not only that, you were competing at IFSC Para Climbing World Cups early on. What did you learn from competing that first year that affected your training and preparation going forward?
MR: That first competition was definitely eye-opening. I had thought that I was making progress in my climbing. I expected it to be hard, but it was much harder than I initially thought.
I learned just how hard it was to climb multiple climbs in a row. I learned that if you’re not careful, your arms just get over tired and that it’s very hard to recover from that. Lastly, I learned that I really needed to work harder at both the physical climbing and my mental game.
SJ: What was that experience like, being around high-performing athletes as someone newer to the sport?
MR: The first time I’d ever competed was one of the loneliest things I’d ever done. I was really, really intimidated by all the strong athletes that were around me. I didn’t really know how to make friends at the time, so I just did the routes and stayed off on my own. I had some friends, though. I had the people who had gotten me into paraclimbing in the first place. But they were focused on their own competition, so I didn’t feel comfortable chatting with them while we were there.
SJ: You’ve made rapid progress, going from 12th place in 2019 to winning your first World Championship gold last year. How have you dialed in your training routine over the years to accomplish this?
MR: My training has changed a lot over the years. At first, it was just climbing. And I could only handle doing that about once or twice a week. I’d only be able to do about 3 or 4 routes over the course of several hours, so the progress was very slow.
Over time, I got to the point where I could do more climbs in a session, and I could do more sessions a week. That helped, but it wasn’t enough. The problem, though, was that I didn’t really think it was worth putting a lot of time into training since everyone else was so much better than I was. I figured that if I didn’t train as hard, I had a reason to not be as good.
But something changed in 2022. I can’t explain what exactly, but there was a sudden shift in my mindset. I had suddenly gone from coming in 5th at one competition to coming in second at a different one later in that season. I then thought it was a fluke and that I must have gotten lucky, but then it happened again. I then realized that my training had changed, and that improvement in my climbing was more attainable than I’d initially thought.
Since then, I developed better training techniques. I’d learned how to tailor my gym workouts to my climbing. I’d learned how to appreciate all the routes, the training, and the competitions themselves.
SJ: Would you say climbing has helped you adapt in other areas of your life as well?
MR: Climbing has been really helpful in regards to my everyday life. I’ve done a lot of work to improve my footwork, my core strength, and my overall confidence. Focusing on footwork and core has really helped to improve my walking. I found it easier to get around and easier to trust the training I’d been doing. The confidence I’d gained from climbing helped me feel like I can do activities outside of climbing. I feel better at taking risks now. That confidence has been really good for my mental health.
SJ: Seems you can’t get enough of the vertical world, you’re also into circus and aerial arts? I imagine training for comps is nearly a full-time activity, are these more of fun, break the routine, mental recovery activities for you?
MR: Training for aerials is way more similar to climbing training than one might think. It takes a lot of core, arm, and shoulder strength to do the tricks that I can do. The core training that I do for aerials has directly helped my climbing training. I do a lot of inversions on my apparatus, which has helped to train the parts of my core that I’d previously had a much harder time targeting. The raw arm strength that I need in order to hold myself on my Lyra with one arm in pretty precarious positions helps ensure that my one-arm rests on climbs are reliable.
The mental game of being 10-20 feet above the ground with just my arms holding me on the apparatus, with no safety mats beneath me, has helped me to maintain and even improve my lead head. I tend to hang upside down by one arm, I throw all of my weight down into one elbow, and I hang upside down by one knee
SJ: You’ve climbed big walls, Predator at Rumney (NH) is a dream project, and you are at the top of the sport for international competitions. Dare I ask, what’s next for you?
MR: One of my main goals is to go back to Yosemite and redo Washington Column. It was my first big wall experience but I ended up bailing because I wasn’t ready for it yet.
I also have this other project in the Gunks in New York called The Dangler. It starts with two pitches of a 5.3 climb, and then becomes a 5.10 roof at the third pitch. It’s particularly hard for me because I’d have to be able to get gear in while dangling off a roof, which means either doing a bunch of heel hooks or literally just hanging there with one arm and placing gear with the other. I don’t know when, but I’m for sure going to do it.
I have a lot of outdoor projects this year. It’s going to be a great season.